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In anticipation of the Greenwich Forest neighborhood receiving historic status last week, Beverly Glover-Wood reflected on her house, one of few there with unpainted original wood moldings. Her neighbor, Kevin O'Prey, thought about paint too, but took a brush to his house before it was too late.

The Bethesda neighborhood was one of three county sites to receive approval from the Planning Board for historic designation last week. The move, if OK'd next year by the County Council, will make county approval necessary for any changes in the Greenwich Forest neighborhood, as well as the Bureau of Animal Industry Building in Norwood Park in Chevy Chase and the Higgins Family Cemetery in Rockville.

It was a move O'Prey fought in his neighborhood, a 1930s suburb-in-the-forest designed by Morris Cafritz. O'Prey said making changes to his house, including painting the brick brown, should not be a decision the county meddles with. Now, he said, one of the workers painting his house saw a neighbor surreptitiously snapping photos of the project.

"I'm just livid about this," O'Prey said. "This is exactly what folks like me have been afraid of."

John Jessen, the neighborhood citizens' association co-president, said mostly the neighborhood has "been having healthy debate."

"I hope they aren't acting the way that Kevin suspects," Jessen said. "Monitoring the progress of home renovation doesn't sit well with anybody."

It's the prospect of teardowns that Greenwich Forest's historic designation supporters are more worried about. Two homes in the historic core have been demolished to be replaced with multiple modern homes in the past five years, events that spurred the citizen's association to seek the historic designation.

"The problem hasn't been the neighbors the problem has been builders coming in," said Glover-Wood. "We're trying to preserve what we've got before it's too late. I think I've got an incredibly beautiful house and I want it to live on."

The approval of historic designation for the Bureau of Animal Industry Building in Chevy Chase, more popularly called the recreation center, was met with more widespread praise. The building began as a farm of sorts in 1909 and housed government experiments cross-breeding animals, like horses and zebras. Now the only mixing in the building is done with paints, in the class Doris Haskell has taught for 50-odd years.

"It just has the kind of characteristics you just don't see in this country anymore. We're always fixing things up, but it's got all the old stuff in it. All these worn parts." Haskell said, reflecting on the building. "Every artist loves an old wall."

The Higgins Family Cemetery in Rockville is on Arundel Avenue, and contains 27 marked graves and possibly additional unmarked ones from the Higgins and Knowles families. Jack Jones, of Kensington, is a descendent of the Knowles line, and though he hadn't been active in getting the designation for the cemetery in years, said he was happy it finally happened.

He said the Higgins and Knowles families were "the two premiere landowners in Montgomery County before 1900," and much of the land the B&O Railroad used came from their tracts.